“Hey, they didn’t have a good naming system for their files,” Marco protested.
Ari held up a hand to quiet him. “He switched out the programs, but the audio still kept with the original government program. While the kids hear the yearly announcement from our government leaders, they got the visual of a sexual education virtual. I was in the library, the only kid not plugged in, so I heard the continued snickering from all the way down the hall. It took the teachers a good ten minutes to realize their lecture wasn’t that funny.”
Another round of laughter filled the room.
Marco stood to clear his plate. “I’m innocent until proved guilty.”
“You are never innocent,” Ari said with a smile.
“Well it was good for the kids. If the President isn’t good birth control, I don’t know what is,” Marco said.
Laughter erupted out of Ari at the memory of their President with his curly black hair and oversized nose. Laugher that made her belly ache, and she savored every second of it.
Chapter 29
Dinner went longer than usual with jokes and stories that rang into the night. Catching glimpses of who her teammates were before they came here, only endeared them to Ari more. Everyone came from vast backgrounds and carried different experiences and assets. Ari would bet money that Joe was a full blown ninja in his previous life.
She mulled over these warm thoughts until she found herself at Patrick’s door. Anxiety crept around the edges of her mind, and she scolded herself for being a coward and hit the buzzer on the keypad.
The door slid open, and he spoke from another room. “Come on in. I’ll be there in a moment.”
She walked into the front office with the familiar desk littered with HUBS, screens, and other tools. She didn’t want to pry, but she couldn’t help but see the partially packed bag on the chair.
He walked in, hair damp from a recent shower, and dressed in jeans and shirt. “Sorry about the mess.” He moved the bag and offered her the chair.
“You going somewhere?” She motioned to the bag.
“Yes.” He continued holding the back of the chair for her. “I’m leaving tonight to reach out to our most promising hardware guy for help. I can’t risk plugging anyone in until we know we are safe.”
“Of course.” Ari took the seat.
He patted her shoulder once, friendly and brief. Then Patrick moved behind the desk and shuffled some of the hardware out of the way. “You probably wonder why I called you in here.”
“I do.”
He glanced away for a moment and took a deep breath. “I know in the past things have been awkward with us. Especially with how we first met. Pretending to be romantically involved, even if not with our true identities, started us out on an interesting foot. In retrospect, I don’t think it was one of my wisest recruitment methods.”
“Oh.” She supposed he was right, but it shouldn’t have mattered. She had Reed, or she used to have Reed.
“Anyway, that is behind us. While I do care for you, I think we need to focus on the next step with the team.”
“Okay? Not to be rude, but why are you telling me this.” Again, she added mentally as it felt as if they had covered this already.
“Because you’re still avoiding me. Flinching when I barely touch you.” He looked at the shoulder he recently tapped.
“Sorry.” She didn’t think she was so obvious.
“No need to apologize. I also catch you looking at me sometimes, with that contemplative gaze. The same one I’m sure you’ve caught me doing. There may be something there, but neither of us can afford to be distracted by that right now. For us to work closely together, we need to have everything clear between us. Wouldn’t you agree?”
She let a shaky breath go. He was right, but talking about it created an uneasiness in her, like admitting there was something there. Something she wasn’t ready to do. “I agree. Let’s focus on work.”
“Good.” He grabbed a tablet off the tablet. “I should be gone for two days, three tops, but I realized after your disappearance that if anything should happen to me, I should be prepared.”
“Is it that dangerous? Shouldn’t you take backup then? Joe, maybe?”
He waved away any of her concern. “No. I think I’ll be fine. Just want to be prepared, and we need Joe here. Anyway, I wanted to talk to you about what would happen if I don’t make it back.”
That stark reality that there was no guarantee for any of their safety made Ari lean back in the chair, silent.
“I want to leave my position as head of the team over to you.”
“Are you crazy?” She couldn’t understand what he was doing. “Why?”
“You won’t be alone. I talked to Joe about taking over the tech side of things, but I’d like you to be in charge of the house.” He pulled up a document that said just as much.
“I’m the newest member of this team and one of the youngest.”
“I think you’re the best suited, and I’ve talked with this through with Joe and Harini. They both agree you would be the best for the job.”
“Why not choose Harini or Blur?” Ari asked. If there was a mother on their team, it would be Harini. And Blur was technically the brightest by far.
“Blur and Joe are intelligent, but they don’t like to deal with people or the practical side of things. They will try to push and direct you, plenty, but I’m counting on your reason. And Harini? I love her like my sister, and her heart is the size of the moon, but she doesn’t have the stomach to make hard calls.”
“And I do?” She realized that this role came down to the process of elimination and that didn’t make her feel any better.
“Yes, you do. You ran away from your country. You were a spy in an elite realm and escaped an island in the middle of the ocean. You have made the hard calls, leaving family and loved ones behind when needed. I know you’ll make the hard calls here as well.” His eyes were intense as they watched her.
“If I agree to this, you’re not allowed to go anywhere.”
“I don’t plan on it.” A smile grew on his face.
“Stop smiling, I didn’t say yes.”
“But you will.” His grin grew even bigger.
She grabbed a nearby pen and threw it at him. “I’m not happy about this.”
He grew somber. “I know. I’ll be safe. Promise. Just the first time I met you, even though you wore a different skin, I knew you’d be a great addition to the team. We have hackers and tech guys. But what we really needed was you.” He handed her a table. “I need you to memorize this.”
“What is it?” Ari looked at the document. It gave the IP address for a chat room, and also a location.
“I told you I have several emergency protocols in place. I need you to memorize the location of this apartment. Sue and Joe have memorized the other two. Depending on who is compromised, you can use it to help the team regroup. Money and supplies will be available to you there.”
“I better not need this.” She continued studying the information, just in case. Then, once it was locked in, she handed it back to him.
“I pray you don’t.” Pushing back his chair, he stood. “I have to catch a plane.”
“Of course.”
He escorted her to the door.
Turning to say goodbye, she couldn’t help her urge to hug him. He probably thought she was an idiot, but he returned the hug. He smelled of shampoo and soap and felt strong and capable. She needed a friend and that what he was. Maybe one day that would change, but she had no desire to go there now.
Pulling back, she looked up to him. “Be safe.”
“I will.”
Leaving his room, she rubbed her goose-bump-riddled arms. Things finally felt right between them and he had to run off. That was how life worked sometimes.
Nothing really changed the next couple days because Patrick was gone, except they didn’t bother with any meetings. They all touched base enough throughout the day and with nothing new coming up
, they each kept to their own projects. While most of the team helped work on the hardware problem, researching old models of the first VR machines to find differences, Tricky still focused on Maxim. She even recruited Ari to the job.
The afternoon had set in, and Ari returned to the meeting room with two cups of coffee. She found Tricky asleep with her head resting on her arms folded on top of the table. Ari didn’t want to wake her, since Tricky had been sick she had needed a lot more rest that she wanted to admit.
When Ari sat down, Tricky stirred. “Damn, I fell asleep again.”
“You needed it.” Ari pushed the extra mug across the table.
She gave a grunt of disapproval and sipped the warm drink. After a few moments, she stood up and stretched. “I don’t have time to rest. Maxim and the Board have teams of people geared to tackle the threat of warpers. We’re too understaffed to take someone on like them.”
“Yet we have taken them on, and we have power they don’t have, like Blur, and Joe, and you.”
Laughing, she shook her head. “I’m nothing in comparison. Not anymore. You saw all the tools Maxim had at his disposal on the inside.”
“Be patient with yourself.”
She glared at Ari and sat back down in front of her screen. “We don’t have time for patient. He’s now a major piece in world politics, with a new weapon, and a list of crimes that deserve a firing squad.”
Ari wasn’t going to argue with Tricky, especially when she was right. “Well, you dropping back into a coma because you wear yourself out isn’t going to help anything either.”
Tricky didn’t counter so Ari knew she got that point in.
Ari pushed a button, and the screen Tricky was last working on flashed up on the projector so they could both analyze the information. It was a financial log Blur acquired from a not-so-legal source.
“I’ve tracked Maxim’s accounts for so long I found those easily. He’s been making friends in VLEX for a while. He can pay the board members to look the other way when countries complain about his international violations. His end game could be sitting on the board to get a free pass to do what he wants, like a little boy who doesn’t like being told no. And so far it’s working and there’s nothing we can do about it.” Tricky began getting worked up, the agitation evident in her voice and her white knuckles.
“Maybe they hired more than one to see who would succeed?”
“That’s likely. Maxim paid a lot and nothing that bastard touches is good.” She threw a pen at the projected images. It hit the wall and fell to the floor.
“We’ll get him,” Ari promised her.
“How many more lives will he destroy until then? How many innocent people killed or tortured or abused until he’s gone?” Her voice tightened with emotion.
Ari sensed there was something else eating at Tricky. Her friend had been more fragile and raw since she woke from the coma, but Ari couldn’t help but wonder if she was missing something. “What is it?”
Tricky pushed back from the table and ran her hands through her platinum blonde hair. “I’ve met him once, you know?”
Ari’s mug plopped down in surprise. She knew that Maxim killed Tricky’s mom, but not the specifics. “What happened?”
“I was sixteen.” Tricky stared off in the distance as if she was in another place. “We were poor. Dirt poor. Lucky if we got one meal a day. My mom knew Blur and I were special. Finally, she contacted someone who contacted someone. She only wanted a better life for us.”
Tricky took long pauses as if it were a struggle to relive it. Ari remained silent, giving her time. Tricky continued, her accent thicker than Ari had heard it.
“We worked for someone and once they realized what we could do, what we could really do, they moved us to a different city. We worked and worked not seeing our mom for weeks. We had soft beds and full stomachs but kept asking about our mother. So, we ran away in hopes to find her.”
“They dragged us back, beat us, and then killed our mother in front of us. And there in the corner, Maxim sat watching the whole thing.” Her eerie voice faded out as she continued staring off while a silent tear fell onto her cheek.
When it was apparent that she was done, Ari reached out a hand and placed it on her arm. “We’ll get him, Tricky. I promise.”
She shook her head, coming back to the present and wiped at her face. Then she returned Ari’s gaze. “It’s me or him Ari. One of us will die very soon.”
Chapter 30
Patrick came back in the morning and in less than thirty minutes everyone was seated around the table in yet another meeting.
Tricky leaned back in the chair, feet on the table. Something she would have never gotten away with before her accident. “You know while you were gone, we went three whole days without a meeting, and we survived. No spontaneous combustion or anything.”
Harini snickered and covered her mouth with a hand. Only Tricky or Sketchy could get away with that attitude.
Patrick smiled at her. “I missed you too.”
Blowing him a kiss, Tricky put her feet down. “How did my brother get out of this?”
He turned his attention to the group. “He said he was working on something and would be a few minutes late.”
“Lucky,” Sketchy said from the opposite side of the table, which was ironic since he wasn’t required to attend. He came to this one though because he’d been working with the others on the hardware problem. He might not be able to explain what he is doing, but his hands worked with a brilliance of their own.
“Okay.” Patrick ignored Sketchy’s remark. “The guy I worked with was not willing to help us or, more specifically, I couldn’t trust him to help us.”
A couple people moaned or echoed dismissive tones.
“Money or promised protection was not enough to get him to take on the board that runs VLEX. He had been on the run, avoiding them for some time and was pissed I even showed up at his place.” He glanced at Joe who had found this guy from another friend on a different group. “In exchange for me telling him how we tracked him down he did offer me a small nugget of information.”
Ari set down her mug and straightened at the mention of information. This team could do a lot with a nugget. “Which is?”
“I have a list of machine models that are safe to use. The new models came out about ten years ago.”
“Ten years?” Sketchy asked incredulously. “Ten years might as well be one hundred years in tech age.”
Marco and a couple of others voiced their agreement. Finding an old VR machine that had the capabilities to sign into any of the current worldwide realms would be hard if not impossible. Even Ari worried about their ability to do that.
Joe, who remained quiet to this point, spoke up. “We may be able to find them but getting them back here undetected will take a lot of time and makes us vulnerable.”
“We don’t have time.” Tricky slapped the table. “They just started with this program. Give them time and they’ll have killed off all of their opposition.”
“She’s right.” Blur appeared in the doorway, breathing hard.
“What did you find?” Patrick asked.
He tapped on his HUB and projected it to one of the large screens in the room. News accounts scrolled past with photos of comatose people, hundreds of them. So many that they lined hospital rooms. The news reporter mentioned India and a widespread sickness that triggered VR comas. Planes and other transportation were shut down. The whole country was on quarantine.
Patrick muted the feed. “How many?”
“Thousands so far. There isn’t an official total yet.” Blur’s bleak eyes held rage behind them, and he looked more like his sister.
“Why?” Ari asked the obvious question.
“Because he is an evil bastard. Do you need more of a reason?” Tricky snarled at her.
“Sometimes the why holds the way to stop him.” Patrick turned to Blur. “What else did you find?”
“The Indian embassy has been
a big opponent against Maxim stealing finite resources from their country. Reading through VLEX sessions, I found they also protested his assignment to the board. They were the minority, but they recently put forth legislation to look into Maxim’s conflict of interest by his position on the board.”
The pictures continued to flash by of people, even teenagers, lying unconscious and without the resources to take care of that many people, Ari knew they would die. Would there be any other option for these people? Tricky recovered because she was manually pulled out of the system. These users didn’t have that option.
“We no longer have months,” Tricky reiterated.
“You’re right.” Patrick turned off the projection and rubbed the back of his neck. “I still can’t put anyone back in a vulnerable machine.”
“Wait,” Ari lifted a hand as the mass whirlwind of thought settled into an idea. “What if instead of bringing the machines here, we go to them?”
Her gaze flicked to Patrick and she continued, “If we’re going to take on Maxim and who knows how many members of the VLEX board he’s in bed with, we’ll need to come at him from several different locations. Hit him all at once and hard. The others also need to know that Maxim is using VLEX, their trusted worldwide realm, to run his business.”
“Could we just forward the information to the country heads and let them deal with it?” Harini asked.
“Do you think the information would even get to the right people or would Maxim shut them up before they get a chance?” Tricky asked. “They have turned a blind eye over and over against these elitists. We need to use their own program against them.”
“It’s too dangerous,” Patrick said. “If we unleash this program to the public, we don’t know where it could end up.”
“It’s already out there,” Ari pointed out. “Every country will be studying it to see how to weaponize it. The people need to know about this. We can’t trust the governments not to be under Maxim’s influence. And I think I know how.” The ideas started building in her mind like a snowball gathering speed.
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